Social media giant Facebook is taking the ad blocking challenge very seriously. As a free service, that depends on advertising for its revenue, the social major has attempted for a solution that it claims as a win-win for users and marketers.
“As more and more content has shifted to the internet, online experiences have improved dramatically, becoming more immersive and intuitive. But many digital ads haven’t kept up. We’ve all experienced a lot of bad ads: ads that obscure the content we’re trying to read, ads that slow down load times or ads that try to sell us things we have no interest in buying. Bad ads are disruptive and a waste of our time,” explained Andrew Bosworth, VP, Ads & Business Platform in a company post.
Facebook has taken a two-pronged approach to the issue. It has expanded the tools it gives people to control their advertising experience. Second, it is providing an update on its approach to ad blocking on Facebook.
Blocking Ad Blocker:
Reminding that there is place for relevant and well-made ads, Facebook has designed its ad formats, ad performance and controls to address the underlying reasons people have turned to ad blocking software. “When we asked people about why they used ad blocking software, the primary reason we heard was to stop annoying, disruptive ads. As we offer people more powerful controls, we’ll also begin showing ads on Facebook desktop for people who currently use ad blocking software,” continued Mr Bosworth.
Some ad blocking companies accept money in exchange for showing ads that they previously blocked. Facebook has not taken this route. “Rather than paying ad blocking companies to unblock the ads we show — as some of these companies have invited us to do in the past — we’re putting control in people’s hands with our updated ad preferences and our other advertising controls,” Mr Bosworth informed.
More Power To People
Drawing on its experience and inputs from speaking to people to better understand their concerns with online ads, Facebook has made ad preferences easier to use, so people can stop seeing certain types of ads. If they don’t want to see ads about a certain interest, they can remove the interest from the ad preferences.
People also want to be able to stop seeing ads from businesses or organizations that have added them to their customer lists. Facebook has added tools that will allow people to do this. These improvements are designed to give people even more control over how their data informs the ads they see.
